Global environmental drivers of influenza

Abstract

Patterns of influenza outbreak are different in the tropics than in temperate regions. Although considerable experimental progress has been made in identifying climate-related drivers of influenza, the apparent latitudinal differences in outbreak patterns raise basic questions as to how potential environmental variables combine and act across the globe. Adopting an empirical dynamic modeling framework, we clarify that absolute humidity drives influenza outbreaks across latitudes, find that the effect of absolute humidity on influenza is U-shaped, and show that this U-shaped pattern is mediated by temperature. These findings offer a unifying synthesis that explains why experiments and analyses disagree on this relationship.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Oct 31, 2016
Source ID
10.1073/pnas.1607747113

Entities

People

  • Ethan R Deyle
  • George Sugihara
  • M. Cyrus Maher
  • Ryan D. Hernandez
  • Sanjay Basu

Organizations

  • Human Longevity
  • National Science Foundation
  • Stanford University
  • United States Department of Defense
  • University of California
  • University of California, San Francisco

Tags

Readers

  • Atmospheric Science/Meteorology
  • Infectious Disease/Epidemiology
  • Systems Analysis and Design